ANZAC Spirit

As a volunteer army representing a nation tainted with a Convict stigma, the Australian soldier developed a unique set of characteristics that became known as the Anzac spirit. As New Zealand soldiers fought alongside Australians, they shared the attributes of the spirit.

The diggers motivation to fight

Chester Wilmot "Tobruk 1941" Angus & Robertson, Sydney

'Italians with whom I talked found it hard to believe that the Australians were volunteers. They understood their own position. They had been sent to Libya to win glory for Mussolini. They presumed that the Tommies were there merely to defend British Imperial interests. But why were the Australian volunteers there?

The ordinary Digger would have found it difficult to tell you. If you ever persuaded him to talk he would not have spoken of defending freedom, or removing injustice, or of saving the Empire. He might have said, "Oh, I wanted a bit of fun;" or else, "I dunno, I was fed up with my job;" or perhaps, "well, all my cobbers were joining up and so I went along too." Not much more than that. These would not be the real answers. Men may join up for fun or for a change, but if these are the only reasons, they would not go into action and fight through with bayonet and grenade when machine gun bullets kick the dust around their feet and they see the man next to them go down. If you could get the ordinary Australian to say what he really feels, it might be something like this:

"Well, I came away because I believe in a fair go and I wanted to be with my mates; because I like being able to say to a copper, 'That's all right, copper, you got nothin' on me;' because I want to say what I like when we're having a beer at the pub; because I want to do what I like with the few quid I've got in the bank; and because women and kids are being bombed in London and shot in Prague, and someday this might happen at home if we don't do something about it."

It was because they felt the battle was being fought for things like these, which mattered directly to them, that the Mallee farmer and the Kalgoorlie miner, the Bendigo bank clerk and the Sydney solicitor made the soldiers of Tobruk just as they made those at Gallipoli.'

"I didn't join out of patriotism. I was looking for what I'd lost; the feeling of a lot of mates all working together, relying on each other, for some other reason that making dividends for the shareholders."

Digger defiance and conviction

Chester Wilmot "Tobruk 1941" Angus & Robertson, Sydney

'Berlin Radio made a fatal mistake in trying to jibe and scare the Australian soldier into surrender. The longer the odds Lord Haw Haw offered against the Diggers chance of getting out, the more heavily the digger backed himself. He and his father before him had gambled on the outcome of a draught or a strike. They had defied bullying of man and nature and had gambled with their livelihood. It seemed a small step from this to gamble now with their lives. The odds were long; the fight would be hard, but they knew what was at stake.'

Larrikin sheep thieves

Chester Wilmot "Tobruk 1941" Angus & Robertson, Sydney

"Larry the lamb" was the jealously guarded mascot of the British ackack battery. Every night his masters placed a sentry to protect him from predatory Australians."

German assessment of the diggers

Chester Wilmot "Tobruk 1941" Angus & Robertson, Sydney

From Major Ballerstedt, C.O. 2nd Battalion, 115th Motorized Infantry Regiment:

" The Australian, who are the men our troops have had opposite them so far, are extraordinarily tough fighters. The German is more active in the attack, but the enemy stakes his life in the defence and fights to the last with extreme cunning."

Captured German officer:

" I cannot understand you Australians. In Poland, France and Belgium once the tanks got through the soldiers took it for granted they were beaten. But you are like demons. The tanks break through and your infantry keeps fighting"

·English assessment of the Diggers

"there was hardly the slightest pretension to being gentlemen or civilised. Their faces were coarse and hard bitten. .....the Australian manner..... was blatant and self assertive and the Australian voice likewise. I am afraid I never wish to meet any more Australians- there seems to much of the Botany Bay strain in them! My servant too complains that they are a rough lot."

" a disgrace to the Army, nothing but an undisciplined mob... and we are all confined to Barracks through them. They are all mad drunk having their Easter holidays but we dare not do as they do, they do as they like."

"The Australians rose to the occasion. Not waiting for orders, or for the boats to reach the beach, they sprang into the sea....Then this race of athletes proceeded to scale the cliffs."

"In the later stages of the last war, the Australian Corps was by general recognition perhaps the most effectively operated of any; it certainly played a leading role in our victorious offensive."

" It is this meticulous clinging to our obsolete, undemocratic standard of what they are pleased to call discipline-saluting etc- that has made the English army so rotten that it has never achieved one successful offensive in the whole course of the war."

"But Churchill was unequivocal on this subject - he told his physician Lord Moran that Australians were of "poor stock". Presumably he was referring to the so-called convict stain."

Egyptian assessment of the Diggers

"Not since pre-historic stone ages has such a naked army been seen in civilised warfare as the Australian army corps fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula. They display an utter abhorrence for superflous clothing. They are famous throughout Europe for their hard-fighting, hard-swearing and nakedness, even to a sense of indecency."

Australian attitudes to the English

" With the climate went petty annoyances such as the refusal to accept Australian money, and more serious ones, such as the British class system, with which they had no patience. Thus privates or NCOs insisted on visiting restaurants where the officers ate. The English regarded this as a sign of Australian arrogance; the Australians as English snobbery. They were quick to resent what they suspected was condescending, or patronising behaviour, and demanded to be treated as equals. They detested the English distinction between officers and men."

" They had been taught by their parents, or had otherwise acquired, a strong dislike of the speech, manners and attitudes of the higher British classes. It was possibly the latter's nonchalant sense of superiority, combined with a lack of sensitivity to the suffering of the troops, that infuriated the ANZACS most. "

" The road is a continuous stream of detached parties of Tommies .. who have become 'lost. stolen, or strayed'... Seems to me that whole damn lot are more intent on getting back than getting up. They'll make a good advance guard - for the civilian retreat. "

General Monash

:"not lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs...the Australian army is proof that individualism is the best and not the worst foundation upon which to build up collective discipline"

Digger Carl Jannsen, Mena Camp, Egypt, 1914

"A large proportion of these wasters are not Australians, but Emigrants from England. There are some very bad Australians I admit, but their badness is of a different type. The Australians' chief weakness has been drink and violence but the Englishman is a dirty sneak and in some cases a deserter from the Imperial Service. When I say dirty I mean slovenly and filthy..."

Keith Murdoch (The father of Rupert Murdoch)

The British troops were suffering from 'an atrophy of mind and body that is appalling... The physique of those at Suvla is not to be compared with the Australians. Nor, indeed, is their intelligence... They are merely a lot of childlike youths without strength to endure or brains to improve their condition... After the first day at Suvla an order had to be issued to officers to shoot without mercy and soldiers who lagged behind or loitered in an advance... [By contrast] It is stirring to see them [the Australians].. they have the noble faces of men who have endured. Oh, if you could picture Anzac as I have seen it, you would find that to be an Australian is the greatest privilege the world has to offer' -

Sgt. Hookway, his Section Sergeant description of John Simpson

"a big man and very muscular, though aged only 22 and was selected at once as a stretcher bearer... he was too human to be a parade ground soldier, and strongly disliked discipline; though not lazy he shirked the drudgery of ‘forming fours’, and other irksome military tasks"

The Wild Colonial Boys

"Dysons collection of war drawings only contained one, idealised picture of a dead soldier. The soldier looks nobly up at the sky filled with shell bursts. Instead of a short factual title it was called The Wild Colonial Boy; Sooner duel than in slavery Bowed Down in Iron Chains. These words came from the ballad commemorating the legendary bold bushrangers of Australia's past nationalism. Now the bush ethos was forever linked to the heroic Anzac legend. A revitalised Australian nationalism had now been forged"

Motivation to volunteer